Ross William Hamilton/The OregonianSells walks off the Park Avenue West for the last time in June.

1. Hoffman worker finds work as industry sees for rebound: Richard Sells of Hoffman Construction Co. was the last man left on the Park Avenue West when developer Tom Moyer halted construction in June. Moyer stop work when he couldn't find a loan to finish the job. Sells said in June that he planned to play golf until his next job came along. He's back at work. Walking through South Waterfront his week, I ran into Sells where he's working on the Mirabella senior housing tower. Sells said he did take some time off, then came back to work on Gerding Edlen Development's 12W apartment and office tower. He's since been transferred to serve as field superintendent at the Mirabella. He's hoping to go back to the Park Avenue West when Moyer starts work again, maybe next year. "I'm hoping to stay working," he said. The construction industry has seen some small signs of improvement this summer. The industry's employment peaked at 105,200 in March 2007 in seasonally adjusted numbers. The industry dropped to 77,800 in July and move up ever so slightly in August to 77,900. As for the high rise work in downtown, future job prospects aren't great. There's a generation of towers that will finish in the next year and there's virtually nothing in the pipeline -- except in the health care industry -- given in the credit crisis.

2. Oregon has nation's fourth highest unemployment rate: The feds announced this morning the state-by-state unemployment rankings: 1. Michigan 15.2 percent; Nevada 13.2 percent; Rhode Island, 12.8 percent; California and Oregon tied at 12.2 percent. Calculated Risk has a nice chart showing how each state stacks up to its historical highs and lows.

3. GSA to pay $39 per foot in the Pearl: The U.S. General Services Administration announced this week that the immigration office would move to a new building at 1455 N.W. Overton St. At the time I wrote the story, I didn't have the cost. The GSA says the feds will pay $39.21, a rate that is far above the market rate in town. Why? GSA spokesman Ross Buffington says it's because the immigration office -- a division of homeland security -- needed a lot of extra accommodations. That includes higher seismic standards; higher accessibility standards than the ADA requires; and extra security features like blast protection, progressive collapse and shatter resistance glazing. "In summary, the lease costs for the new CIS building are fair and reasonable given the structure of the lease and the above standard items," Buffington wrote in an e-mail. As a reminder, the developer on the project is Overton Pearl LLC, a group whose members include Portland developer Mark Madden. Madden also led the recent work to bring Icebreaker to a building near the new immigration site.

4. Mortgage bankers profit way up: Mortgage bankers made an average profit of $1,088 per loan originated in the first quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association reports. That's an eye-popping increase from the $148 per loan they made in the fourth quarter of last year. Why? The MBA attributes the rise largely to a refinance boom in the first quarter. Those refinancings allowed operating expenses per loan to drop. The MBA said the average share of refinancings to total originations jumped to 66 percent in the first quarter up from 42 percent in the previous quarter.

5. Report: FHA reserves will drop below requirement The Washington Post has the big national story this morning: The Federal Housing Administration has been hit so hard by the mortgage crisis that for the first time, the agency's cash reserves will drop below the minimum level set by Congress, FHA officials said. The FHA guaranteed about a quarter of all U.S. home loans made this year, and the reserves are meant as a financial cushion to ensure that the agency can cover unexpected losses. "It's very serious," FHA Commissioner David H. Stevens said in an interview. "There's nothing more serious that we're addressing right now, outside the housing crisis in general, than this issue."